Category: Editorials

April’s Final Denouement: Shut the f*** up, narrator!

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Getting spoiled on a show, it has happened to us all. At one time or another we’ve probably kicked ourselves for not being more careful. Sometimes you accidentally run into spoilers while puttering around on the internet. Sometimes someone let’s some bit of information slip without meaning to. And sometimes the show itself is there spoiling things for you. This third, and much more rare, scenario is what I want to discuss today. Maybe you’ve experienced in show spoilers and maybe you haven’t.

As you may know, I have been watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes, a series that has an ever-present narrator. The narrator does his job which enhances the tension and foreboding of coming events, he may also provide information that is beyond the scope occurring in the far future or the distant past, but many times he is like the narrator of too-much-information. Is it really necessary to end sentences with things like “this is the last time they would ever speak like this . . .” DUH-DUN-DUH! But what may be even worse are the previews for the show, they are literally unwatchable if you don’t want to know all the important stuff that will happen next. Characters, important characters, get killed in episode previews! This has becoming a running joke as we watch through the series.

But this isn’t the only show that has a runaway narrator or previews that leave nothing to the imagination. However, to be fair some crazed narrators are entertaining, ones that come to mind are the narrators from Fist of the North Star, Hayate the Combat Butler, and VOTOMS. Original Gundam certainly has previews that act in a giving-it-all-away manner, Mazinger Z has utterly misleading episode titles, GaoGaiGar’s narrator sometimes just lies in the previews, and in a more recent example Cross Game destroys its own cliffhangers in the show previews!

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Berserk Season 2, The Revenge of Fetus Baby!

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***This was our 2010 April Fool’s post***
(For actual Berserk Season 2 info go here)


BEWARE OF SPOILERS

hisuicon It is truly a shame when a classic anime is forgotten. The Berserk anime used to be praised up and down by the fan community; on everyone’s 10 top favorite anime lists. But the second season has gone largely undiscussed online which is a travesty. I hardly saw any fanfare on the Internet and only one or two episode blogs seem to have reviewed any of it. As I understood it, Berserk sells well for Dark Horse but I guess that is more among comics and graphic art fans than anime fans. I hope that after Narutaki and I do this review more people will go back and check out what they are missing. Berserk season two meets if not succeeds in surpassing the high bar of dark fantasy that the first season established.

narutaki Well, perhaps it is just because the follow up to the extremely popular first season was a long, long, long time coming. I think people just got tired of waiting and finally moved on, but they should really reconsider and come back to Berserk. Another worry that many could run into is whether or not a second installment like this can really live up to it’s predecessor. But much to our surprise, not only does the second season sport the high standards of the first but you have a great studio behind it, and some grand new editions that both come from the manga and are completely original.

hisuiconSeason two picks up right where season one left off. We have Skull Knight busting in and saving Guts and Casca on a horse that looks exactly like Fuunsaiki. After getting cleaned up Guts vows to take down the God Hand but first he has to go through a training arc. Guts gets swordsmanship lessons and life lessons from a most unusual source. I would say who his teacher is but I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Guts then has to enter a tournament to recruit new allies and friends to take down the dreaded God Hand and their sinister minions. But of course they have some laughs and make a few missteps along the way. All of this building up for the big showdown at the end, which ends on another cliffhanger.

narutaki Eventhough the series starts very much where it left off and moves right along from the manga, it’s nice to see their own touches here and there which get stronger as the show goes along. This was especially seen in the new cast and the return of some favorites. I never would have expected there to be an essentially zombie version of the Band of the Hawk. You might think that would destroy the impact of their beautiful-horrific destruction at the end of the first arc but the seance scene and then the later resurrection episodes are so spectacular that you’ll be happy to have them back. I also really liked the addition of Guts’s philosophical musings, it gave at introspective feel to some of the major twists.

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Let’s talk about stars that are not the Black Tri variety.

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All this month our friends over at Ani-Gamers have been posting articles in honor of one of the most distinguished and important figures in anime and manga history: Osamu Tezuka. Evan also sent out an open call for anyone who wished to contribute to the site-wide celebration. He had a good deal of reviews but not that many pieces of analysis. So we answered with a brief discussion of Osamu Tezuka’s famous Star System. It is a short piece, an introduction really, to what exactly the Star System is. We then go on to talk about the different ways creators have gone on to use its influence. So have a look at it and the plethora of other Tezuka-themed pieces at Ani-Gamers!

Tezuka and the 108 Stars of Destiny